HAART

Greg and Mycroft sat in silence for a long couple of minutes as Greg processed the implication of what Mycroft had just said. The room seemed to darken around them as the grim specter of the secret Mycroft had been keeping expanded and engulfed them both in its shadow. 

“So,” Greg started, then paused again, unsure of how to continue, “you have…” 

“I am HIV positive,” Mycroft preemptively corrected, “I have been living with HIV for about twenty years now.” 

“And that’s why you’re refusing to date me? Mycroft, why would you think I would care about that?” Mycroft stood up suddenly, his face reddening. 

“Why wouldn’t you?” he snapped, then with a deep breath he walked over to his decanter and poured them both a glass of scotch before settling back in his chair. The fine lines of his face were more defined, the ever present exhaustion in his eyes threatening to overtake him. “It’s a long and painful story,” he said with a sigh. Greg reached out a hand, which Mycroft took, almost apprehensively. 

“I’ve got time.” Greg smiled warmly at his friend, who took a small breath and nodded. 

“I met him at university. He was a professor of mine, married, with a sick wife and a baby. I am not proud of how I acted, Gregory, it’s important to me that you know that, but I had an affair with him. He said a lot of things, chief among them being that his marriage was long over, and he was only staying with her because she had cancer. I believed him, young fool that I was, and I allowed myself to justify what I was doing. It was barely a month after she died that I had moved into his house with him. Within the year we had a commitment ceremony and considered ourselves husbands. I was 22.

“We had been married for two years when he started to get sick. Even as he continued to get sicker I was too stupid to connect the dots. It wasn’t until a nurse at the hospital sat me down and started talking about a new antiretroviral they were willing to try that I realized what was actually going on. I confronted him, and he admitted that he had been diagnosed three years before he met me. He knew the whole time and he never told me, nor did he tell his wife before she had Michelle. The next day I went to get tested. Of course I had it. I told him that we were done, and I removed my things from the house and filed all the necessary paperwork to get a guardianship in place for Michelle. He died two months later. I didn’t go see him before he died. I don’t regret that. 

“For a few years after that, I hardly left my house except for work. I climbed the ranks very efficiently, which you can do when you have nothing else in your life. All I had was work and Michelle. I got Michelle treatment, the best available, but didn’t bother for myself. I was willing to let the disease kill me. I didn’t care if I lived or died. It was, ironically, Sherlock’s journey of self-destruction that managed to snap me out of mine. He needed me to be alive, so I had to survive. 

“Back then, just accessing treatment was so difficult. So many pills each day, and the cost was exorbitant. I was lucky that I had family money, many others were not that lucky. All told, I spent about five years- between the time when I didn’t know I was infected and the time I spent allowing the virus to do as it liked--without medication, so my treatment plan was brutal. My viral load stabilized and it is currently very low, but a lot of damage was done. My immune system will never recover. Years of medications since then have damaged my kidneys and liver, given me insomnia and thinned my skin. The treatments we have now are very effective, I expect to live a full life, but it has come at a cost. So I am not taking the chance of passing it on. I will not do what he did. So I don’t date. Ever.” 

Greg had listened in stunned silence to the story, his heart breaking for the young man who had been so betrayed by someone who had claimed to love him. Mycroft hadn’t let go of Greg’s hand for the entirety of his story, and Greg couldn’t help but notice a slight tremor in the hand he was clasping. 

“Mycroft,” Greg finally broke the silence that hung heavy between the two men. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that, and I completely understand why you would be reticent to date, but now I know the story and I still want to date you. So, would you be willing to give me a chance?”